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The proletariat is the group "with nothing to lose but its chains," because it is propertyless.
The Third World is the combined societies of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The average Third World wage was last calculated at 48 cents per hour. Third World workers in the export sectors average slightly more at $1.24 per hour.(1)
Average wages in China are typical---50 cents an hour in manufacturing in 1994.(2)
While Marx's predictions regarding Europe and the United $tates did not come true, what he said about capitalism is still true when the world is taken as a whole--a world in which the Third World is 80 percent of the population.
In the world as a whole, inequality is steadily increasing. "In 1820, the largest gap between any two countries in per capita GNP was over 3:1, but by 1992 it had steadily increased to 72:1," wrote a MIM author.(3)
Notes:
1.Adrian Wood, North-South Trade, Employment and Inequality: Changing Fortuntes in a Skill-Driven World (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 400.
2. William Greider, One World Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 477.
3. The MIM author cited Angus Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy 1820-1992 (Paris, OECD, 1995), p. 22.